


Glass Half....

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fic, semi-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5798278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Danny fight- and the words cut a little deeper than usual. In the end, though, actions speak louder than words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Half....

**Author's Note:**

> Written to four prompts from the 1_million_words comm on LJ that spoke to me, and started to turn into a series of scenes in my mind. The bolded text items below are the prompts. 
> 
> This is perilously close to kind of canon-them, for me. And also a version of them that's not as nice to each other as I like - but sometimes not-nice does tend to happen in life, even with those we are close to.

**Glass half-empty or half-full?**

“This!” Steve slammed the drinking glass down on Danny’s desk. “Tell me! Tell me what this is.”

They’d been arguing hard out in the bullpen before Danny retreated - each of them fighting for their very different perspectives on how to handle a case: Steve convinced they should take what he felt was correct, decisive action and Danny telling him he was nuts and overly optimistic and his plan was a reckless mess, like him. 

Not an unusual situation, but....still, this wasn't their usual grousing. They'd ended up shouting, practically spitting at each other over the computer table, sending Chin and Kono back a few steps to distance themselves from the venom. So it was obvious Steve was not delivering this beverage for Danny’s refreshment or his pleasure. 

But he couldn’t resist the temptation.

“Thank you, how thoughtful," Danny reached for it, extra-nonchalantly. “ _Owww!_ What the hell…”

Steve had slapped his hand away. Hard. Not playing, not at all. It stung.

“Don’t touch it. I want you tell me _one_ thing, Danny: Is that glass half full, or half empty.”

“It’s half empty. Obviously. See? There’s water up to here,” Danny reached slowly, voice going extra patient, tracing the line with his index finger as if demonstrating for a kindergartner. “And there’s no water above here. It’s. Half. Empty. But I’m thirsty - so what it mostly is, you stubborn son of a bitch, is a frigging glass of water.”

Danny reached for it again, and got smacked again for his efforts – this time on his wrist, by the flat of Steve’s big, Neanderthal paw-palm; smacked hard enough for it to make a snapping sound. 

He swallowed hard around the ‘ouch’ this time, determined to keep it in. He glared down at his desk and breathed through his nose, willing his clenched jaw to relax and not grind his teeth into pulp.

“It’s half full.” That’s all Steve said back at him– three simple words, coolly delivered. You could take them as encouragement, maybe, as Steve urging him to look on the bright side. Except…. 

No. 

Not words of encouragement: It was an order. It was Steve telling him to admit he was wrong, and Danny wasn’t in the fucking mood.

“If you _touch_ me….” Danny reached for the glass once more, slowly. “If you _slap_ my hand again, we are in serious trouble. As in …. serious…”

“Danny… don’t. Stop You're being a....”

“… _serious_ trouble.”

"....jerk."

At least Steve didn’t budge – didn’t smack him this time. 

Danny took the glass and downed the water in one long swallow.

“There,” he slammed it down just as Steve had when he walked in his office. “Now it’s all empty, babe. See? Glass all empty.”

“You’re gonna miss me someday.” Steve got up to go.

“No. I’m not. I’m….really, really not.”

 

**"Truth is a point of view about things." ~ Marcel Proust**

"Oh, so now I might, maybe, possibly be right!" Danny let his right hand leave the steering wheel, waving it in a slow, wide, 'wow, what do you know?' kind of gesture, glaring over at Steve. "Did I just hear you admit it? That I might be right?

"Will you please keep your eyes on the road?"

Steve pushed Danny's hand back toward the wheel, as he practically cowered in the passenger's seat. Danny hated on himself for enjoying the sight - for taking advantage of his new-found knowledge that Steve suffered so much being a passenger. 

Control freak.

"That's funny, from you. 'Keep your eyes on the road' That's....rich. "

"I never said you might be right," Steve looked out his own window, an apparent attempt to quell car sickness. "I said you have your own point of view about how to proceed. You have your view, and to you that's your truth. I have mine. And I'm in charge so...."

"Yeah. So... here we go," Danny muttered. "...like it or not. If you get me killed? I'm haunting you forever. I'll haunt you 'til you're dead and then I'll kick your ass all over purgatory."

"Purgatory?" Steve practically hooted it, grinning, distracted for a moment from his churning gut. "I'd have thought you expected to go straight to heaven?"

"I am going straight to heaven," Danny let go of the wheel with both hands, arms up and palms skyward to demonstrate - and enjoyed the sound of Steve sucking air in through his suddenly clenched teeth. "But I'm pretty sure when he hears my story? God'll give me a hall pass to go downstairs and _get_ you."

 

**Self-help Book**

"Danny? Have a second?"

Steve, standing in his office doorway again after the 5-0's raid on the drug den. Steve's left arm in a sling, a purple bruise over his right eye that would get bigger and bluer and likely needed the stitches Steve had initially refused, but.... Steve was there and alive.

"Yeah. I've got a sec. What do you want?" Danny said, still keying stuff in. 

"How's it going with the paperwork. You almost done?"

"I am. I'm almost done. You don't have to wait around on principal - go home."

"Actually, I can't," Steve looked sore and miserable and ...tired. Deflated. Not the way he usually looked after a mission that was a win. "I need a ride."

Danny huffed an annoyed sound and looked around; Kono and Chin had gotten out of there - so used to Danny tending to Steve or Steve to Danny after one of these things that they'd dotted their own 'i's and crossed their own 't's' and headed out.

"I can take a cab," Steve offered.

"No. Give me fifteen minutes. I'll get you home."

It got quiet, and Danny was focused- so he was surprised to hear Steve, still standing there thirty seconds later.

"'We jailed some serious big-bads today, Danno."

"Yeah. I know. We did."

"That's a lot of heroin that won't hit the street. Right?"

"Right. We won. I get it. We used your plan and we won. But Steven - we won because Chin and I were fast on our feet and Kono's a hell of a good shot. If she misses that shot a few hours ago? Then I'm here doing this alone and you're in the hospital or....worse."

Way worse. 

"Nah. I had him. The guy who jumped me; i'd have pinned him, eventually."

Danny couldn't help it; stopped typing, sat back in his chair and glared at him -- a full-on, 'you are a moron who nearly got stabbed to death today and you won't even admit it' glare.

"I'll let you finish that up...." Steve hobbled away. 

-*-

"Want to come in?"

"I can't," Danny had his car in reverse in Steve's driveway, foot on the brake waiting for him to get out of his car. "I have to go home. Got a book to read, one I ordered that just came in."

"Yeah? What's it about?"

"It's a self-help book. For co-dependent people who can't detach themselves from the semi-suicidal, self-abusives in their life. Who aren't smart or strong enough to walk away from them the way that they should."

Steve's jaw had a certain set in it as he silently hauled himself out the car door. But that wasn't what made Danny's throat tighten and heart fall; it was the 'little boy lost' look in those eyes. 

It was always those frigging eyes that got to him. That forced him to make bad decisions against his will. That made Danny stay.

 

**Kerflooey  
1\. Informal. to cease functioning, especially suddenly and completely; fall apart; fail.**

 

"Almost there, Danny! Hang on, okay? Deep breaths...."

He heard it, but not by much; the voice sounded thin and hollow in the narrow shaft, barely even registered through the ceiling of the elevator and the pounding of his terrified heart.

"Steven? Are you ....you are _not_ seriously climbing down here?"

"Rappelling...." the voice got a little louder and Danny noted rapping sounds in the dark, over his head, like someone landing right above him, then tapping at the metal, looking for the trap door. "You can't climb down an elevator shaft, can you? You either fall or... you rappel."

"Are you out of your mind?!" Danny shouted up at the rectangle of light that suddenly appeared- not very bright, really, but it was blaring compared with the pitch darkness he'd sat in the last hour. "Your arm...."

 "It's been a week," said the figure dropping through the hole, legs first, that must be Steve. "My arm's fine."

A week - during which they'd barely talked. The team, thank God, was case-free, so they could both hide in their offices and mostly avoid each other. 

The beam of a small, pen-flashlight appeared as Steve's upper half dropped in, Steve barely keeping his feet and managing not to fall on his ass, flashlight between his teeth. He took it in hand once he was steady, waving it around to survey the scene, illuminating the elevator car corner by corner.

"How you doing, D?"

"How am I doing? I'm trapped in an elevator for the second time this year. Not only that..." 

'I was alone,' Danny wanted to say. 'In the dark - yelling for help, for what felt like hours.' He couldn't remember feeling that scared since he was a kid.

"It's all right," Steve said, sitting next to him, shoulder to shoulder, his long legs stretched out casually like they were just hanging out. "Help's on the way."

"What do you mean, on the way? Aren't _you_ the help?"

"No. What, do you think we're gonnna climb up on top and wrench the outer doors open or something?" Steve asked. "That's....deeply, crazy, dangerous. The car could move again and...smush us. Like bugs."

"Then why the hell did you..."

"I called the fire department, they're on the way. That'll be faster than the elevator company. But even the fire department, it'll take a good half hour for 'em to get here, set up, get us out. I figured...that long? You'd be a heart-attack risk. So I'm here to sit with you. Give me your hand."

"Give you my what?"

"Hold my damn hand, Danny."

"Did the power in the building go out?" Danny asked as he acquiesed, mostly to distract from the fact that he was, in fact, holding Steve's big, goofy hand and it felt huge and warm and comforting. 

"No, it's the elevator. It went kerflooey."

"Excuse me? Ker...."

"They're all computer-based these days, and sometimes the computer spaces out. It doesn't know what to do, so it shuts down."

"This thing could fall. This goddamned thing could fall, and.."

"It won't."

"...kill us both. Why did you climb down here, you maniac, if it could fall and kill us both?"

"Because it won't, Danny. Glass half full, right? And anyway..if it did? If it fell and you died? I have no interest in seeing what it's like, the world on the other side of that happening. So...."

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Talking. Stop saying 'I love you' at me."

"I didn't say..."

"Yeah, you did. You just did."

"I guess I did."

Steve's hand let go, but apparently only so Steve could slide that arm behind Danny's shoulder. The flashlight got set between them, aimed at the ceiling and in the semi-dark Danny felt Steve's other hand reaching for his, holding it again.

"I'm sorry," Danny said. 

"For what?"

"For what I said at you the other night. When I drove you home."

"Oh, that," The hand holding Danny's squeezed it tight. "It's okay."

"We've got some time to kill," Danny said, trying not to think about another half an hour of dancing nerves so strong he could just about puke.

"Yeah, we do," Steve said. "Wanna fuck?"

"Not so much," Danny couldn't not chuckle at that, voice almost goofy with a mix of fear and amusement. "Not right now. I'll tell you one thing for sure, though...."

"What's that?"

"I'm taking the stairs the rest of the year."

"Sounds like a plan, buddy."

~*~


End file.
